The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Pupils across the local area are set to benefit after Spalding Academy became a Beacon School for Holocaust Education.
The school has joined the University College London (UCL) Centre for Holocaust Education programme.
It will see the school armed with top quality learning materials and methods to deepen teaching about the historic event and highlight the need for modern day tolerance.
The methods, resources and detail will be shared with other local secondary schools.
Paula Baker, history teacher at Spalding Academy, said the benefits are invaluable.
She said: “Pupils are going to have a better understanding of the Holocaust and a variety of different skills and ways of learning.
“I am aware across schools it is a topic that can be difficult to teach because it is so emotive. Lots of young people have lots of misconceptions.
“Pupils will get a far greater understanding of what happened in Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Hopefully that will have a great impact in terms of intolerances and prejudices.”
Initially the scheme involves better equipping the school to teach about the Holocaust and helping it to develop lesson plans – work that is now ongoing.
In January, Mrs Baker plans to host a professional development day for teachers from other local secondary schools to share what she has learned. The beacon school scheme is provided free to Spalding Academy with all costs covered.
A programme outline said: “The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education works with schools to enable young people to deepen their understanding of the significance of the Holocaust and to explore its relevance for their own lives and the contemporary world.
“Developing this area of the school curriculum has also been shown to have significant benefits for broader educational goals, for pupil engagement and achievement, and for teaching and learning across a range of subject disciplines.”
It adds, the programme seeks:
To raise the status of Holocaust education in schools, embedding it within schools’ ethos and ensuring it becomes a priority area in the curriculum.
To demonstrate the value of teaching and learning about the Holocaust to broader educational values such as spiritual, moral, social and cultural; Global Learning; active, democratic citizenship; and pupils’ development of independent and critical thinking. The focus on teaching and learning about the Holocaust can provide a lens through which generic teaching and learning improve.
To establish Beacon Schools as dynamic hubs within school networks, models of how teaching and learning about the Holocaust can make a major contribution to young people’s education.
